Plenty of quotes from horror movies encapsulate the last two and a half years, but this might be the best one–nobody trusts anybody now, and we’re all very tired. It’s only fitting that it comes from one of the best horror movies ever made, John Carpenter’s 1982 masterpiece The Thing, which just turned forty.
To the uninitiated: The Thing is a remake of 1951’s The Thing From Another World, about a shapeshifting alien horror that terrorizes the crew of an antarctic research station. It is a moody creature feature full of gore and paranoia. If you’ve never seen it, you should! It will be in select theaters next week.
I picked up the 4K remaster on Blu-Ray last fall and made my friends watch it, and I’m pleased to report that it is as fantastic now as it was when I first saw it in high school. I was worried that the special effects would look a little goofy remastered, but even those hold up well. Perhaps I should have expected that: Rob Bottin’s practical effects are legendary in the film world, and he worked himself so hard on this movie that he was hospitalized for exhaustion.
Anyway: SYFY recently published an oral history of the film that has a lot of great stuff about its creation and legacy. If you’re a fan, check it out.
What are some horror movies you folks love? I’m always open to recommendations on that front.
All threads are open threads–this one is no exception.
Acts of Kindness: Clearing Out The Archives
Craig
Going to see the 40th anniversary screening at a theater here in SF in a couple weeks. Recently saw the 45th anniversary screening of Smokey and the Bandit at the theater. The Thing is brilliant, can’t wait.
RSA
As much a fan as I am of John Carpenter, I’ll respectfully suggest that the image be put beneath the fold—it’s pretty horrific, and some people are sensitive.
Major Major Major Major
It looks like I accidentally clicked publish early, publishing an image I’d decided not to go with, sorry all!
TaMara
I LOVE both those films. I do favor the B&W one.
Footnotes
Quite possibly my all-time favorite horror film. I think this is the year I finally show it to my kid.
TaMara
To answer part two: Nightmare on Elm Street is one of my all-time favorites. And the original Body Snatchers (1956) I don’t watch a lot of scary movies.
VFX Lurker
John Carpenter’s The Thing is magnificent. A true horror classic.
I love watching Aliens: Special Edition, but it’s more of an action film with horror overtones. For pure horror, I admire and appreciate Alien for its great beauty.
Mnemosyne
“I understand that we’ve all had a really hard day, but I don’t want to spend the rest of the winter tied to this fucking couch!”
And the debate goes on as to whether one or both of the survivors was really The Thing.
Mnemosyne
I’m not as big on horror movies as I once was, but I still love a spooky Pre-Code horror like Island of Lost Souls, or the moody Val Lawton B-movies of the 1940s, especially The Body Snatcher.
VFX Lurker
One of the best quotes from that film!!!
To answer an earlier question you had in a long-dead thread, I would like to recommend the Kinokuniya bookstore in Little Tokyo for anime/manga books, videos and Studio Ghibli merchandise. There should be other stores in Little Tokyo that sell anime/manga merchandise, but Kinokuniya is a good starting point.
Major Major Major Major
@VFX Lurker: it’s a great chain!
Doug R
Saw there were 4K versions of Flash Gordon and the Lord of the Rings trilogy coming out, but I’m not much of a disc buyer these days.
Major Major Major Major
@Doug R: this is I think the first blu-ray I’ve ever bought. It’s a full remaster and it looks amazing.
geg6
Not much of a horror fan. A good thriller can be fun though. I’ll always watch Silence of the Lambs, for instance. Seven is another. I like a lot of Brian DePalma films: Carrie, Dressed to Kill, Body Double are all great.
Mnemosyne
@VFX Lurker:
Oh, I’ve been to Kinokuniya many a time. That’s where I got my manga version of “The Everyday Magic of Tidying Up.”
Is there, like, an intermediate place to take two young adults who go to at least one anime convention every year?
kalakal
I’m not into horror movies that much ( though I love the schlocky old Roger Corman movies and the old Hammer ones) but one I did enjoy was a French werewolf one – Brotherhood of the Wolf.
The M R James adaption Night of the Demon is good.
As is the original The Wicker Man
Hands down the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is Don’t Look Now.
And yup Carpenter’s the thing is a goodie
rikyrah
Don’t do horror. Uh uh
Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony
Let the Right One In and Midsommar are both really good. Also The Others
RSA
I haven’t watched horror movies in a decade or so, but I used to be a huge fan. A few of my favorites:
Major Major Major Major
@Mnemosyne: I’ll bet good comic shops have big manga sections nowadays.
eclare
@RSA: Ooh, I was trying to recall the film The Devil’s Backbone, thank you for mentioning it. I don’t do horror, but I like suspense, and a friend helped me remember the film Felicia’s Journey. Very creepy and atmospheric, directed by the same person, Atom Egoyan, who directed The Sweet Hereafter.
NotMax
Not a horror flick but recently came across a (to me) supremely memorable final line of dialogue in a creditable mystery movie from 1938, to wit,
“Let me be your donut.”
:)
Old Dan and Little Ann
I watched as many horror movies as I could from 1981 to 1990 or so. Wegmans used to have a vhs movie rental section. I don’t remember ever seeing The Thing all the way through. When I originally saw the title my brain went to “Swamp Thing.” Same year. Loved that movie as a 3rd grader
Edited to add The Shining is my all time time favorite. Although I’ve seen the Nightmare on Elm Street, Friday the 13th, and Halloween originals and remakes countless times.
Mike in NC
I saw “The Road” in a theater when it came out. There was only one other person in the audience.
VFX Lurker
I was going to plug Weller Court (where Kinokuniya is located) for shopping because of its grocery store (Marukai) and gift shop (Kimonoya)…but then I remembered the lovely underground mall with anime merchandise and cosplay stores. Check out this line of “Anime Jungle” shops in Little Tokyo.
Major Major Major Major
@Sister Machine Gun of Quiet Harmony: Midsommar is awesome.
Major Major Major Major
Fun fact: popular video game Among Us was inspired by The Thing and named after another Carpenter movie.
NotMax
Speaking of horror dialogue, Karloff slowly and deliberately commenting
“The phone is dead.” (takes a beat for effect) “Even the phone is dead.”
in 1934’s The Black Cat (trailer) still resonates eeriness.
Leslie
@rikyrah: For the most part, horror (whether books or films) falls into one of two camps for me: either I find the premise too ridiculous to bother, or I don’t — in which case I do not need that stuff in my head. So I generally avoid it.
I saw the original Night of the Living Dead as a kid, and I’ve seen the original Scream and 28 Days Later, and that’s about it. I read Salem’s Lot as a teenager, and didn’t touch another Stephen King book until 11/22/63. But that wasn’t because it was that scary; it was because King did too good a job of making me care about minor characters and then making them suffer terrible fates, and my empathetic soul resented the emotional manipulation. The one time I tried to read a Dean Koontz book, it fell into the ridiculous camp (with apologies to any Koontz fans).
Anyway, I find people who love horror fascinating, because I don’t understand it at all.
Craig
The Thing and Alien are probably my favorite horror movies, cause they genuinely scared me as a kid. I really like Mario Bava’s Black Sunday, and the anthology Black Sabbath with Boris Karloff and the immortal Barbara Steele. The Omen and Rosemary’s Baby also scared the shit out of me when I was a kid. There’s a great spanish film The Day of The Beast from Alex De la Iglasia that riffs on the Anti Christ theme.
Ladyraxterinok
I saw the 51 movie The Thing as a kid and it gave me nightmares for a year or more afterwards.
As I was going to sleep I would see the thing coming in the door to my bedroom.
I don’t like horror movies I heard once on NPR a woman talking about how she didn’t like horror movies She said if she really wanted a scare she’d go to an empty parking lot in the bad part of town late after dark and get out and get some money from an ATM. She said that was more scary than any horror movie
NobodySpecial
Fun fact: Roger Ebert did not recommend The Thing when he first reviewed it, proving that even the most beloved critics are frequently wrong about things.
Oddly, it wasn’t the scariest movie I saw as a kid, but that’s because the doll in Clive Barker’s Trilogy of Terror got to me first. Equally terrifying for young me was seeing Altered States at much too young an age. Alien and The Thing were equal parts scary and yet fascinating because of the sci fi angle.
Leslie
Oh, I forgot a couple. The Omen, and the one with Anthony Hopkins as a ventriloquist possessed by his homicidal dummy.
But the scariest film I ever saw was When A Stranger Calls. Much more frightening, to me, because its premise was actually plausible.
EriktheRed
The original Alien.
That is all.
Major Major Major Major
@Leslie: maybe you can think of it like i think of people who like really spicy food or roller coasters: you can understand the mental pathways involved and probably enjoy triggering them in other ways…
Leslie
@EriktheRed: My brain doesn’t count that as a horror film, interestingly. I guess because of the sci-fi angle. But it certainly has lots of suspense and a few horrific moments.
debbie
The original b&w The Haunting with Julie Harris and Claire Bloom. I was about 12, and there was only one special effect. I, my cousin, and one of my brothers went, and by the end of the movie, we were all sitting in the same seat. I’ve tried watching it four or five times since, and I still have nightmares every single time.
Major Major Major Major
@Leslie: Alien is most definitely a horror film. It’s a diverse genre!
Miss Bianca
Not a fan of most horror movies, which all too frequently, to me, descend into puddles o’ gore and sadism.
(I think I was terribly scarred by seeing the original version of The Fly when I was about seven years old, which scared me so badly that I literally crept home from my friend’s house where I had seen it, because my legs were too wobbly for walking. Gave me nightmares for years!)
That said, someone mentioned Don’t Look Now, and yeah…that one is scary as hell. And fantastic. And the original Night of the Living Dead and The Wicker Man are pretty creeptastic, as well.
The Thin Black Duke
Near Dark. Katherine Bigelow’s brilliant movie left the stereotypical vampire tropes behind, delivering something both groundbreaking and terrifying.
Leslie
@Major Major Major Major: I like roller coasters and spicy food. But I don’t think I actually do understand the mental pathways involved in a genuine love of horror. Suspense, that I can grok. But not horror.
Leslie
@Miss Bianca: Oh, jeez, The Fly. I saw that too, as a kid. Hated it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Mike in NC:
That novel was a brilliant, haunting gut-punch, it still gives me waking nightmares. I couldn’t bring myself to watch the movie.
When I was in high school my friends and I went to all the horror movies, even Silent Night, Deadly Night, and that one about the summer camp, Camp Sleepaway? If you saw it, you probably remember it.
I’ve probably watched the original Halloween ten times, saw a couple of the sequels. My tastes have changed a bit, but someday I’m gonna watch the more recent sequels with Jamie Lee Curtis, of whom I am a big fan. Maybe this fall, when it’s the season
RSA
@NotMax:
Ooh, what a great movie. Thanks for mentioning it. It’s worth watching for the sets alone (the Art Deco rooms).
I’m reminded of a book I’ve browsed through off and on over the years, Cult Horror Movies: Discover the 33 Best Scary, Suspenseful, Gory, and Monstrous Cinema Classics, by Danny Peary. He gives some good background information on movies like The Black Cat and others mentioned in this thread.
khead
These three pretty much :
The Omen (1976), Halloween (1978) and Alien (1979). I was born in 1968 so those set the table for the big horror categories – Devil, Slasher, Space baddie – in my life. Loved The Thing too though.
Also, there’s no way The Thing and Alien get made with similar casts today. A bunch of middle aged white dudes? Wilford Brimley? Harry Dean Stanton? Not gonna happen.
japa21
@RSA: Too me, the scariest movie of all time was the 1963 B&W version of The Haunting with Claire Bloom and Julie Harris. There were virtually no special effects but the psychological impact was terrifying. Also, I think Poltergeist doesn’t get enough attention. Omnes would definitely not want to see it.
debbie beat me to it.
NotMax
Will admit to being nearly unable to resist either version of The Old Dark House when either turns up, the 1932 creaky and campy by way of vintage one or the 1963 intentionally campy from the get-go version.
Craig
@RSA: yeah The Black Cat is great. Karloff is having a great time in that one. As said it’s got gorgeous production design.
Major Major Major Major
@khead: I dunno, zombie Brimley and zombie Stanton could be pretty good monsters.
If a Tree Falls
The Thin Black Duke
@japa21: Thank you for the shout out for Poltergeist. There’s actually controversy about who actually directed it. Supposedly, Spielberg (the executive producer) took over from Tobe Hooper when he didn’t like the direction the film was going.
Wil
Sleepaway Camp is a classic of its type.
More recently, The Conjuring, and Sinister are very good.
The multiple sequels and prequels of The Conjuring, not so much.
TM
Ah, The Thing. I’m always so happy to encounter other admirers. Great horror film, and imo one of the great films. Hard to think of another film that captures so well the paranoia latent in simply being a self. In the great scene where McReady (Kurt Russell) comes back in from the freezing cold where he’s been banished because everyone thinks he’s the thing, and he ties them all up and takes a blood sample, including from himself, to prove who is and isn’t a thing, he then moves to stick the red-hot wire in his own blood first, saying “Now I’m gonna prove to you that I’m not one of those things,” and the awesome thing is that you can see he’s not entirely sure himself.
Not a wrong move in the whole movie. Great performances by Russell, Keith David, Wilford Brimley, and others. One of my favorite closing bits. Only Russell and David are left, outside, in sub-zero temps, as the entire station burns fiercely around them. David: “What should we do now?” Russell, from beyond exhaustion: “Let’s just wait around a while, and see what happens.”
NotMax
Even the most horror averse will appreciate Vincent Price spoofing the genre in Bloodbath at the House of Death.
;)
Ken
@japa21: HELP ELEANOR COME HOME ELEANOR
Major Major Major Major
@TM: the dog is also a fantastic actor.
Gin & Tonic
@geg6:
Little-known fact (perhaps) – Brian DePalma’s father was a renowned orthopedic surgeon, and Brian got his taste for gore from that. My dear wife had several knee surgeries when she was a child, and they were performed by DePalma père.
Gin & Tonic
@VFX Lurker: I used to go to the Kinokuniya in Japantown every time I went to SF for work – the only place to find English-language books on Go.
RSA
@TM: Maybe my favorite horror movie ending.
NotMax
For horror adjacent TV, shout out to the episode of The Twilight Zone featuring Agnes Moorhead, done almost entirely without dialogue.
debbie
@japa21:
I’m with you on Poltergeist, especially those specters.
NotMax
‘@NotMax
Moorehead.
Matt McIrvin
Alien, The Shining, Get Out. I’m not much of a horror fan so the ones I actually love are ones everyone knows.
The only one of those three that is actually supernatural horror is The Shining, and of course Kubrick made it much less supernatural horror and more human psychological horror than Stephen King intended. I think the supernatural stuff is less prone to actually scare me because I can’t take it that seriously, whereas people being evil (or your employer considering you expendable at the ass end of outer space) is incredibly scary.
frosty
I walked out of a Vincent Price movie when I was about 12. I think it was The Conqueror Worm. I can’t stand horror movies then or now.
Matt McIrvin
@frosty: I kind of love The Abominable Dr. Phibes and Theater of Blood, but they don’t scare me that much, they’re more campy OTT fun.
The Moar You Know
Poltergeist scared the shit out of me as a teenager in high school. I doubt I could watch it again. Bit of a surprise as I love horror novels.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@The Thin Black Duke:
I gotta check that one out. I’m a sucker for stories about vampires, werewolves and witches getting new tellings. We need a good werewolf movie. Jack Nicholson’s Wolf is a good popcorn movie, what some would call a guilty pleasure but I’m of the school that there’s nothing to feel guilty about in liking stuff you know isn’t Great Art
Miki
@kalakal: “Hands down the scariest movie I’ve ever seen is Don’t Look Now.”
Yup. Really intense. Donald Sutherland and Julie Christie, for those that don’t know it.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Miki: thanks, I should bookmark this thread.
NotMax
I guess both Wait Until Dark and Play Misty For Me contain enough horror elements to qualify for honorable mention? The border between thriller and horror is porous.
RSA
@NotMax: That was a good one, with a nice twist.
For a horror-adjacent movie, there’s In the Company of Wolves, a retelling of Little Red Riding Hood, with a remarkable performance by the child actor Sarah Patterson, who didn’t do much else afterwards; Angela Lansbury and David Warner are also solid.
There’s a significant element of horror in fairy tales. It’s funny that going in one direction we get Disney princesses, in another direction witch hunters and such.
Kristine Pennington
The whole set of SAW movies – mind numbing gore and horror…..’nuff said
If a Tree Falls
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: You rang?
Wil
The first Evil Dead movie is more horror than campy.
The first Hellraiser movie.
How has nobody mentioned The Exorcist yet?
Kristine Pennington
The whole set of SAW movies – mind numbing gore and horror…..’nuff said
Oops – also the pinhead movies – freaky!!
Geoduck
I guess it’s already been mentioned, but the original 50’s version of The Thing is worth watching as well, has a couple of scenes that still pack a jolt.
Wil
And of course Invasion of the Body Snatchers, both the 1950s one and the 1970s one with Donald Sutherland and Leonard Nimoy.
tomtofa
The most disturbing one I’ve seen was Eraserhead. Like being stuck inside someone’s very bad dream.For suspense horror, Polanski’s (I know…, probably not one I’ll watch again) The Tenant.
The Castle
The best
Invasion of the Body Snatchers (1956)
The Birds (1963)
Rosemary’s Baby (1968)
Jaws (1975)
Alien (1979) and Aliens (1986)
Silence of the Lambs (1991)
Get Out (2017)
A Quiet Place (2018)
The 2nd tier
A Clockwork Orange (1971)
Duel (1971)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
Poltergeist (1982)
The Dead Zone (1983)
Re-Animator (1985)
The 3rd Nightmare of Elm Street (1987), or the first one (1984)
Evil Dead 2 (1987)
The Ring (1998)
It Follows (2014)
The Invisible Man (2020)
geg6
@Ladyraxterinok:
I totally agree with that. It’s why I prefer a thriller over horror. I find almost all horror ridiculously absurd.
geg6
@Leslie:
Come sit by me.
RSA
I’m not a fan of body horror or sadism in horror movies, and over the years my empathy for on-screen characters has ramped up, so I don’t watch much horror these days. I’ll make an exception for some light horror-comedy and spoofs, though. Return of the Night of the Living Dead, Sean of the Dead, Tucker and Dale vs. Evil, Cabin in the Woods… All recommended.
Rand Careaga
It’s not a film, but here’s a wonderfully subtle horror story: Robert Aickman’s “The Fully Conducted Tour.”
Origuy
I’ve seen a lot of manga at my local public libraries. I’m not into it, but my housemates are.
Fake Irishman
@Craig:
not a horror fan. At all. But I saw “the Day of the Beast” in a comparative literature course I took in college and loved it. Great prof, great class discussion. a wonderful mix of camp, extremely funny humor and some pretty profound and frightening social commentary.
It was a required class I needed to get my Spanish double major, (Claudia Schaffer was the prof at the University of Rochester for all the front pagers here on staff there) and it turned out to be a really cool change up that was so much fun across the board. So glad I took it.
When my wife and I were in Spain right before the pandemic crushed us all, I remember riding the bus into town from the Madrid airport and recognizing the building that featured heavily in plot’s climax with a jolt. It had been 20 years since I had thought about it.
Urban Suburbanite
I loved The Hellraiser movies. They’re absolutely ridiculous, but the makeup on the creatures was always great.
My favorite John Carpenter movie was In The Mouth of Madness. This horror writer gets trapped in the fictional town and reality starts breaking down around him.
Wil
The Fog
The original John Carpenter one.
The Oracle of Solace
The movie that scared me the most? Blue Velvet. The horrible things that go on behind white-picket-fence façades.
Major Major Major Major
@The Oracle of Solace: oh man. One of my favorites.
SFBayAreaGal
@Craig: Some scenes from Black Sabbath still stay with me today.
prostratedragon
@NotMax: Great episode, that. Like most of my preferences it’s more toward psychological suspense, like Psycho or The Shining, than what I think of as horror. Another vote for Don’t Look Now, as a very good, unsettling movie which I saw for the first time just recently. I know I’ll be seeing it again. Don’t think anyone’s mentioned The Seventh Veil, another Val Lewton production. One that draws on a lot of movies of this type is Mulholland Drive, possibly my favorite.
Regarding The Silence of the Lambs, see it on a big screen if possible. Of movies I’ve seen both ways, you’d have to go to things like Lawrence of Arabia to find one where it made a bigger difference.
prostratedragon
@Matt McIrvin: My, my, Phibes. Campy, yes, but also quite evil. A taste of the campy fun in this “Dr. Phibes Waltz” clips, featuring a glamorized Robot Maria. For those curious about the latter, there’s a clip from the “Masked Affair” on youtube.
Hob
I’m glad there’s a 40th anniversary re-release, but I sure wish someone other than Fathom Events was doing it. They’ve had a long history of technical and organizational problems so it’s always a real crapshoot as to whether you’ll see something more or less on time that looks good, or half an hour of ads followed by the movie being bizarrely fucked up in some way. In this case it sounds like they really outdid themselves in a bad way with last week’s Thing screenings— the ones they’re currently apologizing for on the linked webpage— as described here.
If there was a screening closer to my area next week, I would probably still go, but I’d be nervous.
Hob
@NobodySpecial: “the doll in Clive Barker’s Trilogy of Terror”
Pretty sure you mean Dan Curtis’s and Richard Matheson’s Trilogy of Terror— Clive Barker had written neither movies nor prose in 1975, he was still pursuing a theater career.
BottyGuy
One of my all time rewatchables.
I think the lesson of The Thing is “Don’t take in strays.”
Especially if the previous owners are trying to bomb them from a helicopter.
Sorta the opposite of this blog’s policy.
Fraud Guy
Who goes there?
Paul in KY
Right up there with Alien as one of the scariest films I’ve ever seen. The special effects were so gross (in an excellent way)!
Always thought the alien must not have come from a world with flying creatures, as I would have thought it could have formed bat wings & flown off, if so.
Paul in KY
@Ladyraxterinok: Do not see the Carpenter version. Pro tip.
Paul in KY
@The Moar You Know: Poltergeist didn’t really get to me, but the scene where he rips his face off was badass.
Paul in KY
@Wil: The Exorcist was pretty scary. Good mention! When she completely turns her head around. That was freaky!
Paul in KY
@BottyGuy: That was a tell that here was a bad dog….
J R in WV
@prostratedragon:
We saw Mutiny on the Bounty in the mid-60s in NYC in some format that used 3 projectors and a screen that filled the front wall of the theater, where the Rocketts perform. Was amazing. Lawrence of Arabia is also amazing in wide-screen.
IMdb tells me “Mutiny on the Bounty was the first motion picture filmed in the Ultra Panavision 70 widescreen process.” Starred a very young Marlon Brando. Lost a lot of money in spite of the the gorgeous scenery in Tahiti, where Brando lived for much of the rest of his life.
I enjoyed the Vincent Price, Boris Karloff, Peter Lorre horror films of the 50s and 60s quite a lot, but once the effects took over from the plot they kind of lost me. Karloff was a master, needed little to induce total terror in an audience past his delivery.
I probably only do 1 or 2 movies a year now, and more inclined towards comedy than horror. Too much horror in this world is real~!~
tokyokie
I saw The Thing a couple of times during its initial run and loved it. But something occurred to me the second time I saw it: Kurt Russell’s protagonist is really a despicable human being in most regards, but the audience is rooting for him because he’s so identifiably human. I love movies in which audience expectations are twisted so that viewers identify with characters they normally would dislike.